Two Altars

Well, guys, we started uh started a series last week, and I have no idea how long this series is gonna go.

As I said, not really a calendar guy.

Um I think it's gonna be a long one because we're going through the life of a man in the Bible named Abraham.

He's named Abram and Abraham.

God eventually changes his name from Abram to Abraham.

So just forgive me on the front end for the number of times I mash that up and mix that up.

No, if I say Abram or Abraham, same dude, okay?

So we're studying the life of Abram, of Abraham, and he is an extremely important person in the story of Scripture.

He's the father of the Jewish people, he's the father of the nation of Israel, ultimately, the nation that God uses to show himself to the entire world, to bring his son Jesus into this world to bless the entire world.

He's in many ways, he's kind of the father of faith.

He's often associated with what it really means to have faith in God, what it really means to be a person of faith, who lives by faith, who lives in anticipation of the promises that God has made, even if those promises seem so far off that they're they're at best a distant dream.

You have faith and you press on.

That is Abraham.

We have a lot to learn from Abraham, but but we're not, even though we're studying Abraham, the series really isn't about Abraham.

It's about God.

Because what you're gonna find as we go through his stories, we're gonna go very, very deep through this.

We're gonna take our time because there's some really cool stuff.

And as I mentioned last week, some really difficult stuff, really challenging stuff, really controversial stuff.

It's gonna be fun.

I'm gonna have some fun weeks.

It'll be fine.

I've gotten in trouble with what I've said my whole life, so it's just more of the same.

If you read Abram's story, you're gonna see moments where he does amazing things.

And you're gonna see moments where you're like, what is wrong with you?

What on earth are you thinking?

He's like all of us, which is kind of cool.

And that's gonna be sort of a constant, like really good moments, really bad moments, really good moments, really bad moments.

And so we'll get to know Abram and we'll see a lot of that.

But the person we really get to know in his story is God.

Because at the beginning of Abram's story, God is pretty mysterious.

God is sort of just a voice.

But as Abram's story goes on, Abram begins to have experiences with God, encounters with God, and God makes himself very known to Abram.

Abram has an intimate friendship with God, and it's one where he is encouraged by the Lord, he's challenged, sometimes corrected.

We really get to know what God is like through Abram in a really interesting way, through the lens of this one flawed person's story.

And obviously Jesus comes later and he's like putting glasses on and whatever fuzzy image we have of God, oh, now it's more clear than it could ever be.

But but Abram's really the, he's kind of the prototype.

And so we're gonna study his story and we're gonna get to know God and we're gonna love what we learn.

Now that's not always the case, right?

Like there's a phrase we have in our culture that says, never meet your heroes.

Because often when you meet someone and you have a high idea of them in your minds, and then you spend time with them, it's it's worse.

I don't know if you've ever had that experience.

I've had that a few times.

Um I grew up a huge fan of Duke basketball, and I was a sports writer for a while.

I got to cover the ACC, I covered Duke.

I got to be in two Duke locker rooms when they were celebrating uh championships.

It was a really cool experience.

And uh I got to interview Coach K, who was like my hero growing up.

I mean, I I was such a fan.

Coach K was like, ah, I just he was awesome.

Got to interview him twice.

Pretty pretty rude to me both times.

Uh first time I was like 24, maybe, and I as a press conference and and I was working for CBS at this particular moment, and I got called on and I asked a question, and he was just like, I don't like that question.

And he just moved on.

And I've told that story before, I'll tell that story until I die.

Uh I love it.

I love it.

It's great.

And I was I was so like heartbroken.

Like I had to act professional, like, that's cool.

But deep down inside, I was like, Coach K, I love you.

Like, please answer my question.

Um, but you know, I don't, it didn't like ruin it for me because he's he's a busy dude and they don't those coaches don't tend to enjoy.

Like, would it be so weird if every day after your job someone came and said, So, what were you thinking today whenever you sent that email?

You're like, Well, I really wasn't.

You know, I just had to get the email done.

Um, like, you know, you said that church was on Saturday.

Justin, do you regret that?

I do, I do.

I think I I tried my best to cover that, you know.

We all make mistakes.

Like, that would be a really annoying experience.

So I understood that dynamic.

I have a gentleman that I know whose little brother got to be an intern at this massive church.

I'm not gonna name the church, I'm not gonna name the pastor, because we'll all, if if you're familiar with the church world, you'll be like, who is it?

I'm not gonna tell you.

Um, but it's a huge church, big time famous pastor, like everybody knows who this guy is if you're familiar with that stuff.

So this guy got to be an intern at this church.

And when you're an intern at a church that big, uh you the interns don't spend time with the lead guy.

That's just, I guess, how that works.

I don't know.

Um, never had that experience.

We've never had something like that here.

And if we had interns, I promise you I would hang out with them because we have a small team, and that's just how we operate.

We're a family.

But at that place, it's different, it's fine.

So he he was an intern, but he never met the pastor.

Well, one day he ends up walking down the same hallway as this pastor.

And he's sort of like starstruck, because this guy's a big deal, and he wants to say something, so he walks up to him and he goes, Hey, and he calls his name and says, Man, I just want you to know I think you're awesome, and I love being part of this place.

And so the next day he gets called into his boss's office and dressed down.

And what he's told is, hey, he's not your buddy, and he's not your bro.

He's your pastor, and the next time you talk to him, you're gonna address him with the respect he deserves.

And so, guys, I was thinking about that, and there's some changes I'd like to suggest.

Um, you know, like I just I've been here like 20 years, and I just feel like it's time, you know, for isn't that so stupid?

Like, Jesus is the king of the universe, and he was so approachable by everybody.

In fact, there's there's stories in the Bible of the disciples trying to like be like, he doesn't have time for you.

And Jesus is like, stop, bring them to me.

And they're like, oh, okay.

And so it's just so funny how in church we can just get so far from Jesus.

And if that ever happens here, just like, and it won't, but if it does, make your voice very loud that that's not okay, okay?

This isn't like I don't think it's gonna happen.

Uh, but again, there's some changes.

I'm just joking.

There's none.

Um no, in fact, if you're new here, just call me Justin.

Like, we don't have titles, we have roles, not titles.

So uh I just that happens in life.

You meet your heroes and it devastates you sometimes.

You get to know somebody and you you have this high idea of them, and then you learn more, and you're like, oh no, it's it's terrible.

But the flip side can be true as well.

You've probably had experiences where you you think you know someone, and then you hang out with them, and there's this whole new layer to them that you never knew, and it just makes your idea of them even greater.

Like when I was dating my wife, her mom is awesome.

I love I love her mom.

She's uh been a part of my life for a very long time.

And you know, we spent quite a bit of time together.

I was around Megan a lot, we're dating, and then one day we'd been together for a while, something happened, and it it frustrated her mom, and her mom, out of nowhere, from my perspective, begins speaking in extremely fluent Spanish.

Just like a flip switched, and she's just like blah, Spanish.

I don't speak Spanish.

And so it's just, but it was like with an accent, and it was it was like I I mean, I the Gloria Stefan, like to the nines, it was just amazing.

And I was just, I was like, because she does not, she's not Hispanic ethnically, and this was a whole I was like, what just happened?

Your mom just became Spanish.

Like, how does that and Megan was like, oh, her Spanish was her first language.

It's like, what are you talking about?

She's like, she grew up in Bolivia as the the daughter of a missionary, and she spoke Spanish first, didn't move to the United States until she was like third or fourth grade, and so sometimes when she gets mad, she goes Spanish.

Which I think is so awesome because I don't know what she's saying, and it's probably pretty bad.

But I don't get to hear it, and it can't hurt my feelings.

So that's good.

You know, my view of her just changed.

I was like, that's so cool.

And it gave me this entire new layer to her life and her background and how she grew up, and I just thought that was awesome.

There's a friend of mine named Scott.

Scott's actually teaching one of our classes in that first HHU session, and I knew Scott for a really long time, and Scott's great, but Scott's pretty like straight-laced dude, you know, financial advisor, that was his career for a long time and all that.

And I found out one day hanging out with him that he won like a national putt-putt championship, which I didn't even know was a thing, but I think is amazing.

And learning that this guy dedicated himself to the discipline of putt-putt was actually one of the most impressive things I could think of.

I was like, I respect you so much more.

And it's silly, but I did.

I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

Sometimes you learn something about someone and it just elevates your view of them.

And so over the course of the next several months, we are going to learn about God.

We're gonna learn about his nature and about his character, and I'm not worried about the whole meet your heroes dynamic.

Because God is he's God, he's not just good based on our definition of good, he is the definition of good.

God is faithful and righteous, and he's just God.

And so as we get to know him better, my hope, my prayer is that at the end of this year, all of us can say, I know God better than I did in January.

And I don't know what your goals are for this year.

Maybe you have big financial goals, big fitness goals, relationship goals, trying to achieve things in life, whatever your goals are, there is none of that could compare to just knowing God better.

If you end this year and you accomplish a lot of things, but you are further from the Lord, or at the very least, it's not that we're far from him, he's he's always close to us, but you you're just more distant, you haven't spent time with him, you don't know him better, that would be a tragedy.

So I'm saying this for me, I want to know God better at the end of this year.

I want to be closer to him than I am right now.

And I'm really excited about going on this journey with all of you.

So, with that said, let's open up Genesis and let's look at uh at how God begins to form this relationship with Abram and how we can learn from it.

All right, so here we go.

Genesis 12, 1 through 9.

We covered a little bit of this last week, so some recap.

The Lord said to Abram, Leave your native country, your relatives, your father's family, go to the land that I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you and make you famous, you will be a blessing to others.

I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt.

All the families on earth will be blessed through you.

So Abram departed as the Lord had instructed, and Lot went with him.

Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.

He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all his wealth, his livestock, all the people he had taken into his household at Haran, and headed for the land of Canaan.

And when they arrived in Canaan, Abram traveled through the land as far as Shechem.

There he set up camp beside the oak of Morah.

And at that time the area was inhabited by Canaanites.

Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, I will give this land to your descendants.

And Abram built an altar there and dedicated it to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

After that, Abram traveled south and set up camp in the hill country, with Bethel to the west and I to the east.

And there he built another altar and dedicated it to the Lord.

And he worshipped the Lord.

Then Abram continued traveling south by stages toward the Negev.

Abram's journey is a really interesting one.

It's going to cover what would be modern-day Israel, Syria, Turkey.

He covers some ground in his travels, becomes a nomad.

But there's an interesting part to this part of the story.

We're going to park here.

There's two moments in just this short section where Abram builds an altar.

In fact, the title of today's message is two altars.

Abram builds two altars.

And in that time, what these would have been built from were just rough-hewn rock, rock that was around, not really cut by a person, rock that was formed by a creator.

And so he would have taken these rocks and arranged them, and these would have been significant places.

Places of worship, places of memory, places of sacrifice.

And he builds two.

It's an interesting thing because we don't really do that anymore.

We don't build altars, at least not in the biblical sense.

And there's reasons for that.

We don't have to build altars anymore.

We have a relationship with God, He's within us.

But it's a powerful idea.

The idea that there's something so significant that happens in your life with God that you need to make sure it is always remembered by you and by those around you.

Something really interesting about that.

Something really powerful about that.

Actually, it becomes a common practice in the Old Testament.

In fact, here's a little visual.

This is a list, a pretty exhaustive list of all the people in the Bible who built altars in the Old Testament.

These are all altar builders.

And you can see that in the biblical references that there are some people that build multiple altars, right?

You have uh Moses, for example, builds a few, Jacob builds a few, Abraham builds four.

In Abram's life, he's gonna build four altars.

He's gonna have four moments with God that are so important to him, so powerful, so life-changing, that he decides an altar must be built.

This has to be commemorated, this needs to be remembered.

And so today we're gonna talk about the first two altars and why he built them and what we can learn from that, what it shows us about God.

The first altar he builds, he builds because God appears to him.

This is really interesting language.

It says that God, the Lord, appeared to Abram.

Up to this point, we actually don't have that word show up in the lives of the people who follow God.

You know, there's characters like Enoch who it says walked with God, and so we can do some logic and go, okay, if if Enoch walked with God, if that seems pretty intimate and close, but he must have maybe seen God, I don't know.

But really, up to this point in the story, post the fall when Adam and Eve sin and are and are no longer in the garden, we don't have a story up till Abraham of God appearing to someone.

Now God speaks, it's okay.

It's okay.

We're gonna build an altar to remember that moment forever.

No, it's good.

It's the negative of concrete floors, man.

It's so hard.

Everyone's gonna hear it.

It's good.

No, we have God speaks.

So, like in Genesis chapter 9, verse 17, it says, God said to Noah.

Genesis 9:17

God talks to Noah.

Genesis 7, 1, when everything was ready, the Lord said to Noah.

God spoke to Noah, Noah built the ark, and actually after the flood recedes, Noah builds an altar.

But God never appeared to Noah, at least not as Scripture tells us.

God simply spoke to Noah.

And that's actually how Abram's story begins, right?

We read this earlier.

Genesis 12:1.

Genesis 12:1

The Lord said to Abram, Leave your native country, your relatives, your father's family, go to the land that I will show you.

God spoke, just like Noah, it's kind of par for the course.

Okay, God has picked Abram as his man, he's gonna use Abram, he's doing something in this guy's life, it must be significant.

So he talks to him.

And Abram would have had context for this.

Abram would have known the story of Noah very, very well.

In fact, uh, we kind of talked about this last week, the way the lifespans are recorded in the Bible, it's very likely that Abram would have, he could have actually known Noah's son.

So he would have had context for a God who speaks.

Okay, I know these stories.

God, you're this is your God, and you're telling me to do something.

I better do it.

I'm glad I don't have to build a boat.

That's probably what he was thinking.

I'm so glad it's not another boat, you know?

I just have to move.

But then, Genesis 12, 7, then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, I will give this land to your descendants.

He appears, he shows up in a more powerful way.

And in the presence of God, Abram cannot help but build an altar.

This is the place where God appeared to me.

This is the place where God showed up.

Now, we can all try to imagine what it would be like to see God.

Now I've never seen God, not with my eyes.

I've seen God move, I've seen God do things, I've seen God in really powerful ways, and I do believe I've I've heard God.

I have context for that.

I think sometimes you've got to be careful using that language too loosely, like God told me, God told me.

Um I remember I grew up in church, and so just full disclosure, like if you were a kid in youth group culture, at least the youth group culture I grew up in, uh, and you know, let's say you wanted to break up with your girlfriend because you liked another girl.

It was really great just to say, I think God wants me to be single for a little while.

A little while meant like two days.

Um, usually you say that language, like, yeah, God's really been telling me I need to like focus on him.

And then two days later, yeah, yeah, that's how that happened once.

Um, guilty.

But but we can be loose with that language, but there are moments in my life where I can say, no, no, I believe God spoke to me.

It was significant enough, and I I didn't hear an audible voice, but it was a thought in my mind that was so clear, and it didn't sound like my brain, and I know how my brain sounds really well.

That wasn't me, and it proved meaningful and true.

And so I'm like, God spoke.

Okay.

But to Abram, God appeared.

Now, there's moments we have in scripture where people saw something I'm guessing similar to what Abram perhaps saw, and they too had the same instinct.

Like, we gotta do something, we gotta commemorate this, this place, this moment, like we gotta remember this forever.

In fact, we have a great story of this with Jesus.

In Matthew 17, verses 1 through 9, it says, Six days later, Jesus took Peter and the two brothers, James and John, and he led them up to a high mountain to be alone.

Matthew 17:1–9

And as the men watched, Jesus' appearance was transformed so that his face shone like the sun.

His clothes became as white as light.

Suddenly, Moses and Elijah appeared and they began talking with Jesus.

Peter exclaimed, Lord, it is wonderful for us to be here.

He's like, This is so cool.

That's basically what Peter's doing.

If you want, I'll make three shelters as memorials, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.

But even as he spoke, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, This is my dearly loved son, who brings me great joy.

Listen to him.

The disciples were terrified and fell face down on the ground, and when Jesus came over and touched them, he said, Get up, don't be afraid.

When they looked up, Moses and Elijah were gone, and they only saw Jesus.

As they went back down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, Don't tell anyone what you've seen until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.

And I mean, you just gotta appreciate for a moment how hard what Jesus is asking them to do is.

Like they just, like what they saw, they saw the man Jesus become who Jesus actually is.

We have to remember, Jesus was a man, he became a man, but he is God.

And they got to see like God Jesus, and it's amazing.

And there's a couple of really famous biblical characters.

There's Moses and Elijah just hanging out, and they're like, Well, like, this is crazy.

I don't know if they had name tags on, I'm not sure they knew.

Uh, you know, that'd be really I think it'd be helpful in heaven if we all have name tags, that'd be awesome.

But, you know, I don't know, there's been a lot of Elijah since, so how will you know it's the Elijah?

We'll figure it out.

But they they see that they have that experience, and Peter's just like, we need to build shelters, we need to like make a thing to commemorate this.

This is awesome.

And then Jesus says, Don't say a word about this.

They had to come back down the mountain.

And their disciples were like, hey, what happened up there?

Was it cool?

Was anything happening?

Like, oh, I mean, you know.

It's fine.

Just hung out with Jesus.

And then I'm sure when Jesus rose from the dead, they were like, okay, we've guys, we we've been waiting so long, you have no idea what we saw.

That must have been a pretty cool moment.

Finally be able to talk about that.

Hopefully they obeyed.

I'm not sure if they did or not, but we'll we'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

No, when you when you see God, when God shows up for you, in whatever way that is, when he shows up in your life in a way that is undeniable, that has to be commemorated.

That it like it must be.

Because he is holy.

He is God.

What we see in this moment from Abram, and we're gonna see this throughout, is that God is holy.

He's holy.

And you know, honestly, it's kind of tough for us in this modern culture that we live in to appreciate that sometimes, right?

Even, let's be honest, even in churches like his hands, I love this church.

I've been part of this church since almost the beginning.

I love the way we do things.

I love how, I love how informal things are.

I love that I can wear a hat if I want to.

That's so cool.

It's informal.

It's it's we've designed even everything we do to be very, very accessible, and that's a really good thing.

Because that's Jesus, right?

Jesus was accessible.

He became one of us, he became common to be with us, and so that absolutely is true.

And some of you may have grew up, maybe you grew up in different environments, maybe you didn't grow up going to church at all, but your concept of church even was like steeples and cathedrals and these giant buildings and architecture that's very intricate.

And there's, you know, there's something about that that can be kind of stuffy and kind of religious and in a negative way, but there's also something about it that's just super cool.

And those cathedrals, even the designs of them were often built to sort of enhance the holiness feeling of God, right?

So when you're here, this is different.

This is a special place.

It's easy for us kind of in our culture today to sort of lose the holiness of God, and we focus so much on the approachability of God that we can lose that angle.

And he is approachable 100% because he's made us holy.

We have to remember that the reason that we can approach God is not because he like chilled out.

It's not like God's like, guys, I you know, the last couple of millennia, I've just been I've been taking myself way too seriously.

And now you all can come talk to me.

No, he's holy.

Like, if if you are in the presence of God, if an unholy thing is in the presence of the holy God, it can't Not, it just can't be.

That's why you see in the in the Bible when God shows up, everyone sort of freaks out.

It's like a it's an intense experience because he's holy.

But Jesus, through his sacrifice on the cross, he made us holy.

Like that happened.

We don't often think about it like that.

But he didn't just forgive our sins, he purified us.

He gave us his righteousness.

Now we've been given his holiness.

It's almost like we're clothed in it.

We may not feel very holy a lot of the times, we may not act very holy a lot of the times.

But he has made us holy so we can approach God in a way that no one else ever could.

But it doesn't change the fact that He is holy.

He is He is God.

And when you're in His presence, it's so significant that it's like you must commemorate it.

You have to.

When God shows up in your life, build an altar of sorts.

Like remember it.

Commemorate it.

Talk about it.

Speak about it.

Because it's significant.

It's not the only altar that he builds, though.

In Genesis 12, 7 through 8, we'll go back.

It said, The Lord appeared to Abram and said, I will give this land to your descendants.

And Abram built an altar there and dedicated it to the Lord, who it appeared to him.

And after that, Abram traveled south and set up camp in the hill country, with Bethel to the west and I to the east.

There he built another altar and dedicated it to the Lord, and he worshipped the Lord.

Now, in this moment we don't have a story of God appearing to Abram again.

Maybe we we just don't know.

Kind of read between the lines, but for whatever reason, Abram in this moment decides, at this place I need to build another altar, and it says that there he worshipped the Lord.

He worshipped God.

It's interesting.

Like this is connected to the holiness of God.

One of the reasons you build an altar, it's not just to remember something that's happened, but it's a place of worship.

It's now a place where you dedicate yourself to honoring God, to praising God, to worshiping God, to bowing before God, to humbling yourself before God.

And it's amazing how you can make something common holy.

Like those altars, they were just rocks until they became an altar.

This was just a Kmart back in the day.

Now it's a church.

God, God is He's God.

He has to be worshipped.

He must be worshipped.

We have to remember that.

He will be worshipped.

Like God is God.

And worship, it's not some ego trip.

Worship is what he deserves.

He's the creator.

The angels worship God.

Like we are we are compelled to worship him.

And there's a few different reasons why you worship God.

Sometimes you worship God because of what he does.

Like God does something, he shows up, he makes a way, he solves the problem, and wow, you have to worship him to thank him for what he's done and to honor him for what he's done.

And that's why we sing songs like today, you know, the battle belongs to you.

God wins battles.

And we, when he does, we yeah, we worship him in response to what he's done.

We see a great example of this in the book of Exodus, for example.

Exodus 15, the the people of Israel have fled Egypt.

They've escaped Egypt and they get to the Red Sea, and that's kind of a barrier, and Egypt's behind them, pursuing them, and God parts the sea, they go, they cross, and then when the Egyptians try to pursue them, the sea comes back and they're defeated.

The Egyptians are defeated, and the Israelites are free for the first time in centuries.

So immediately after that, you turn the page, and what do the Israelites immediately do?

They sing.

They worship God for what he's done.

And the first few lines of that in Exodus 15 are it says, Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord.

I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously.

He has hurled both horse and rider into the sea.

The Lord is my strength and my song.

He has given me victory.

This is my God, and I will praise him.

My father's God, I will exalt him.

Sometimes you praise God for what he does.

And you know, you can do that in a variety of ways.

Like you can do it for big things.

You can do it for little things.

I don't know if you ever have little things that happen in your life that are big to you.

They're like worth, it's worth worshiping.

This is a true story.

I'm not just saying this to be goofy and funny, even though that is like a thing I do.

Um this is like 10 years ago or so, maybe a little longer, but Megan and I were in Chattanooga, and we would we went to Chattanooga, did a little family thing, took our little kids to the aquarium.

Chattanooga has a great aquarium.

And while we were there, we ate at this little restaurant in downtown Chattanooga, and it was called Maple Street, Maple Street Biscuit Company.

Okay, it was a locally owned thing, really awesome, and I blew my mind.

Okay, I don't do social media stuff.

Like I have Facebook and I'll post a lot, honestly, it's like a lot of basketball highlights of my kids and stuff like that.

It's mainly what I do there.

So if you go there, you're like, he doesn't love Jesus.

I do, I do love Jesus.

I just, I'll be honest, I have a thing with like it's easy for pastors to use social media to like always promote church stuff, and it's like you gotta be here Sunday.

It's the most amazing, and I just don't like I don't like that.

Uh so I just kind of use Facebook for my family and and stuff like that.

So that's just saying that.

Um I do love Jesus, okay?

So, you know, I I don't do social media lab.

I'm not like a take pictures of your food person and post it, which if you are, it's fine.

But when we ate there, I took a picture of the food.

I just I just text it to my friends.

I was like, look at this.

Look at this.

This is incredible.

It was so amazing.

It was like biscuits and gravy, like a good biscuit and gravy is one of the greatest things ever created.

And so it becomes like concrete in your stomach, you know, immediately.

Like you have it's it's you know food is good when you know eating it, I'm going to have a worse day because of this.

And I'm gonna feel it immediately.

Like an hour from now is gonna be rough.

And then you just keep going because it's that good.

And it was so good.

And so the next year we went again.

And and Megan, my wife, just pray for her because I'm a super extroverted person and it's annoying sometimes.

But you know, she could see this look in my eye, and she's like, You're gonna don't go talk to the manager.

And I was like, I gotta.

I gotta.

Like, we've just it's so good.

We've been here twice, it's so good.

And so I got up and I went and talked to the manager, and I was like, I want you to know you guys are whatever you're doing, it's it's great.

And he's like, Oh, where do you live?

And I go, I live in Woodstock, Georgia.

He goes, We're actually about to open a place in Woodstock.

And I was like, Like, my it took me a minute.

And I'm not lying to you guys.

I worshiped the Lord that day.

I worshiped the I'm not lying, I'm not saying that to be silly.

It was, I had a genuine I walked out of that place like God loves me so much.

You know, it felt so personal.

And when it opened up, it was like, guys, it's Justin, this is for you.

Also, you have cholesterol and blood pressure issues, so be careful, right?

That was kind of my thing.

Um and then Cracker Barrel bought him and ruined it.

You know, but cracker barrel had a rough year last year, so we'll we'll let it slide.

But yeah, it's now they close because they got bought by a corporate.

It's just that's what happens.

You know, it's over, it's gone.

But I will always remember what the Lord did.

I will never forget.

Well, sometimes it's something that silly, sometimes it's something really serious.

But guys, we live at such a pace.

Like sometimes it's serious.

Sometimes God heals you, or he heals someone you love, or or you're in a desperate situation, and it doesn't seem like there's any solution, and God does something.

Guys, we've had times as a church where that was the case.

There have been seasons in our church where there were some tough things going on, and it was uncertain what it was gonna happen, like what was gonna happen, were we gonna make it through, and God showed up in unbelievable ways.

I could tell those stories for hours.

Just know that that has happened multiple times, and you just go, God, thank you.

But the crazy thing about it is the way we live, the pace of our lives, we're not altar builders anymore.

So God will do something, we're like, cool, and we just move on.

To the point where we can actually forget what he's done.

But it's it's vital that we stop and we worship God when he shows up and does something.

When God does something in your life, worship him, talk about it, tell about it, post about it.

Yeah, absolutely, because he deserves that.

He should.

But here's the thing about worship you know, we don't know why Abram built that altar.

It doesn't say that God rescued him, God's going to rescue him multiple times, but up to this point, honestly, up to this point, all God has done is made Abram's life a lot harder.

He's made him promises.

But like Abram's life is much more difficult than it was when before God talked to him.

We don't have a story of Abram being in trouble, and then God rescuing him, and he's like, I'm gonna worship you.

Because the primary reason we worship God is not because of what he does, the primary reason we worship God is because of who he is.

So look at this story with Jesus.

In uh let's go to Luke chapter 19.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

Uh, Jesus is riding into Jerusalem.

This is right as he's about to get crucified, and he's gonna go to the temple and turn the temple tables over and all that kind of stuff.

So this is like the last little part of that journey before he's crucified.

And it says that as he rode along, he's entering Jerusalem.

Everyone knows who he is, he's famous, and people are so excited.

It says the crowds spread out their garments on the road ahead of him.

This is what they would do for royalty.

And when he reached the place where the road started down the Mount of Olives, all of his followers began to shout and sing as they walked along.

Praising God for all the wonderful miracles they had seen.

They're worshiping.

Blessings on the king who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven, glory in the highest heaven.

They're actually saying, like Hosanna, if you know that word, we there's a worship songs that use that, that's in this story.

It says, but some of the Pharisees among the crowd said, Teacher, rebuke your followers for saying things like that.

Like they're worshiping.

And it seems like they're worshiping you.

Stop that.

And here's Jesus' response.

It's so good.

He said, If I, if they keep quiet, if I tell them to keep quiet, if they keep quiet, the stones along the road would burst into tears.

He's like, I can tell them to stop worshiping me, but then like, you know, the rocks will just do it.

That's an interesting response.

But see, what Jesus is saying is profound.

You cannot stop God from being worshipped.

You can't do it.

The only question is whether or not you'll participate in that worship.

Like he will be worshipped, he will be glorified.

Many have tried to stop that, slow that down.

They tried to kill him, didn't work, backfired tremendously.

Whole nations, powerful nations, have tried to stamp out our faith and stop the movement of Jesus and never worked.

In fact, it's actually in the nations that make it the hardest where it grows the fastest.

It's funny how it works that way.

God cannot be stopped.

He will be worshiped, but the only question is, will you be one that worships him?

See, we've we've been invited, we've been given the opportunity to worship him.

It's actually something that we prayed about today.

Avery prayed about that.

Like, thank you, Lord, for this opportunity to worship you.

And Avery didn't know what we were talking about today.

The Holy Spirit did.

You know, we have been invited to be the part of creation that gets to actively worship God.

The rocks are probably really jealous.

They're waiting for when we'll stop so they can finally start.

But seriously, we get to be the part of creation that worships and honors the creator.

We don't worship him just because of what he does, we worship him because of who he is.

And we have to put ourselves in this place of worshipful obedience to God.

That's what Abram's doing.

The second altar, altar number two, altar number one was God showed up and appeared, God something happened significant.

You build an altar, you remember that.

Altar number two is God is God.

And I want to worship him.

I want to worship him.

I can't wait to worship him.

I want to sing his praises.

I want to shout.

I want to be excited about him.

Not in some just emotional way, but in this genuine, heartfelt, I'm humbled in his presence, and all I can do is is praise him because he's God.

We worship him for who he is.

And what a privilege that we get to do that.

You know, we're told in scripture in Colossians 3.16.

It says, let the message about Christ and all its richness fill your lives.

Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives, sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts.

With thankful hearts.

We're supposed to worship him.

And we're supposed to do it in this way.

That's why it's so important for us, like, not to become weird about music in church, where it's like, I don't like that song very much.

It's not one of my favorites.

You know, like what happens on Sundays is not God giving us our playlist for the morning, right?

It's about us just reflecting on the words and and trusting our worship team to pray about and discern what we need to sing this morning and go to God and worship Him.

That's a part of it, but that's not all of worship.

Like we think worship, we think sing, and it's we're told in scripture, yes, sing.

That's why we sing on Sundays.

Godfather has been doing that for a really long time.

But we're told in Romans 12, on worship team, you can make your way back up so we can we can wrap up.

Romans 12, 1, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he's done for you.

Let them be a living and holy sacrifice, the kind he will find acceptable.

This is the true way to worship him.

The true way to worship God is to offer yourself completely to him as what is called a living sacrifice.

I actually heard a pastor once say, I thought this was brilliant.

He said, you know, that the hard thing about being a living sacrifice is you're always trying to wiggle off the altar.

I was like, I relate to that.

I've had seasons of life where I'm like, I love you, Lord, also kind of want to get off this thing and do my own thing for a little bit, but you know, thankfully God He brings us back.

You live as a sacrifice to God.

It's interesting, the word altar in the Hebrew language actually means a place of slaughter.

That's what the word means.

Because the way they worshiped ultimately was they they sacrificed.

They sacrificed animals.

And we look at that and it's this barbaric, bloody thing, and in many ways it was.

And there's lots of layers to it.

There's a lot of foreshadowing of Jesus who's going to become the sacrifice, and he's going to bleed and die to cover our sins.

There's an acknowledgement of sin in that, a huge acknowledgement of sin and the seriousness of sin.

We tend to underestimate sin and we look at God a lot in the Old Testament, like, man, he's really overreacting to this sin.

Maybe we underestimate the seriousness of sin.

And so there's all these layers to it, but ultimately, if you want to just simplify it, the people of God in worship to him, they they offered something to him.

They gave something to him.

They said, Lord, you've given everything to me.

You know me, you love me, you you you've created me.

I just want you to know I want to honor you by giving something up.

Something important to them.

Like livestock for them was their livelihood, it's their food, it's everything.

And they say, No, Lord, it's yours.

And it was a way to remember that everything they had came from him.

It's just worship.

So we're called by God to worship him.

And the ultimate thing that we give him is ourselves.

I mean, that's the thing.

Talk about giving your time or giving money.

Yeah, sure, obviously.

But it's not even that.

Like, do that in obedience.

Be obedient to God in every part of your life.

See what he does.

But it's not about segmenting your life into all these little categories and go, hmm, I'm gonna give God that, I'm gonna give God that.

It's about giving God you.

It's about saying, I'm yours.

I'm yours, so all I have is yours.

I'm yours, so all I am is yours.

All I do is yours.

Lord, my mind is yours, my allegiance is yours.

And if ever it gets off track, if ever I find myself drifting and giving my heart to lesser things, Lord, let me be that living sacrifice that makes its way back onto the altar and says, Here I am, Lord, here I am again.

Take me.

Take me.

Do what you want with me.

I'm yours.

That's how we worship God.

And that's how Abram worshiped God.

He built an altar and he made sacrifices to God upon it.

And God honored him, and he was faithful, and he met him where he was, and we're gonna see God show up in Abram's life time and time again.

But church, I just want to say this before we take Lord's Supper and wrap up.

I think it's important for us in some way to be altar builders in our lives.

Now, I have a kind of cheesy thing I want to present to you, and I'm just gonna own this right now.

It's kind of cheesy.

But on my way in this morning, I grabbed a rock from our landscaping.

We have all these like landscaping, there's lots of rocks, okay?

And you know, there's some things that God's done in my life this year.

There's actually some things he's done in my life the last few months where he's shown his faithfulness in really cool ways.

As I was preparing this morning, I was like, I just want, you know, I want, I think God knows we need visuals.

That's part of the reason that altars were cool.

It was a visual, it's part of the reason we do baptisms the way we do that God has us do it, because I think he knows we need sometimes, we need something visual to remind us.

And so here's the deal.

On your way out today, grab one of the rocks from landscaping.

If you don't mind, start with the ones that have fallen outside of the landscaping.

That'd actually really help us out.

That would just be tremendous.

Um, start there, you know, with the loose rocks.

But you know, these weren't cut by human hands, these are just parts of creation.

They're a lot smaller than the rocks that Abram would have used to build his altar for sure.

But there's a similarity.

Grab one.

This week pray about it.

Put it somewhere that you'll see it.

Let God just kind of be remind you, be visual, and just say, Lord, is there something that I need to remember?

Is there something you've done for me that I need to make sure it's commemorated?

And you can write something on the rock if you want, you can do whatever, you just leave it as it is, but just be an altar builder.

Commemorate what God's done for you.

Or what he's promised.

I think this is interesting.

Abram built an altar to God before he received what he was promised.

He built an altar to God on the front end of the blessings that God promised him.

You don't have to wait for God to do something.

Sometimes you say, I have so much faith in you, God, I have so much faith that you're gonna be faithful to me.

I'll build an altar before it even happens.

But again, all cheesiness aside, just grab a rock, take it, pray about it, put it somewhere you'll see it, and ask the Lord to show you what it's for and what he wants you to remember, and then worship him.

Offer yourself to him.

A living sacrifice, just as he did for us.

And with that in mind, let's take Lord's Supper.

If you're new, we do this every Sunday together.

And uh as you walked in, there's tables with bread and juice, and you can grab one from there.

If you forgot it, you can grab it right now, no issues there.

Um, but everybody's invited to be part of this.

This bread represents Jesus' body, and this juice represents his blood.

Because as we talk about offering yourself as a living sacrifice, God never asks us to do something that he has not already done for us.

So he has given himself to us.

Jesus, you want to talk about a sacrifice on an altar?

That cross, those pieces of wood that day became the holiest altar in the history of the world.

Because upon that cross, the king of the universe willingly died to cover the sins of all of his people for all of eternity.

That's a gift that we've been given.

We've been made holy, so now we can approach a holy God.

We can have a relationship with him because of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us.

So, in response to this, we're gonna take this and remember, but in response to this, it puts the whole offer yourself as a living sacrifice in a whole new light.

You can trust God with that.

Because look what he's done for you.

So let's pray.

Father God, thank you for this bread.

Thank you for what it represents.

This is the body of your Son.

Jesus, we thank you for sacrificing yourself for us, for paying the price that we could not pay, for doing what we could not do.

We ask that as we take this, you would you would humble our hearts, that you would give us a worshipful spirit, that we would have a genuine desire to humble ourselves and to honor you in everything we do and everything we are, to live lives of worshipful obedience.

And Father, if there's any part of our lives that we recognize is not on track, if there's any area where we're not obeying you, we're not surrendering to you, Lord, just inspire us to make changes so that we are living in worship to you.

We ask this in your name.

Let's take the bread.

Now, the juice.

Lord, we thank you for this cup.

This is your blood.

You shed your blood on the cross.

You atone for our sins.

It's amazing what you've done for us.

It's amazing.

Help us be filled with wonder and awe and gratitude.

I pray that as we drink this, it humbles us, like we keep talking about this morning.

It humbles us into a place of worship for you.

And we pray this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.